Story By: Lee Bullen, Sub-Editor: Marija Stojkoska,  Agency: Newsflash

The Chinese police are investigating the case of a girl who was married at 13 after her husband’s family paid a large fee and who had a baby the following year before being sold into a second marriage again for a fee by her dad.

The shocking case highlights once again the imbalance in the number of men compared to the number of women in the country caused by the one child policy which favoured by children.

The girl in this case, identified only by her surname Zhang from the city of Lianyungang in the Chinese province of Jiangsu, reportedly married a 23-year-old man from the same city in October 2019.

The girl, whose ID card says she was born in April 2006, then gave birth to a son in May 2020, according to the news site The Paper.

The baby’s birth certificate shows that the girl was 14 years old at the time and the father was 23.

At the end of 2020, the couple split up and the girl went to live with her father with the baby remaining with the supposed father.

According to The Paper, her husband, surnamed Huang, discovered that she married again in February this year.

Following a DNA test, he also found out that he is not the child’s biological father despite having obtained custody.

He was quizzed by officers at the end of April after the police opened an investigation into the case.

The girl’s father told the police that he is “not sure” of his daughter’s age, adding that her “registration document is not in the house right now”.

He reportedly accepted CNY 66,000 (GBP 7,345) in bride gifts from the groom’s family before agreeing to the union.

For her second marriage, the father accepted CNY 88,000 (GBP 9,795) in gifts, according to The Paper.

Under Chinese law, men cannot get married before the age of 22 and women have to be 20.

The age of sexual consent on the mainland is 14 while anyone having sex with minors below that age will be charged with rape.

The identity of the man who fathered the girl child is still unknown.

An official from the Lianyungang women’s federation said: “We are still verifying the facts. We have to check with the girl herself, her relatives and folks in her village.

“It is our first time dealing with a case in which a minor had a baby. Another problem is that the baby’s guardian is not his biological father.”